Railroads appear briefly on the fifth grade New York State Social Studies curriculum. A brief search on the internet for information demonstrates that this topic provides rich conceptual and thematic connections beyond the story of the immigrants who helped build the nation's rail system. Primary sources that can be used to teach the railroad include broadsides, advertisements, folk songs, photographs, diaries and letters.
The development of railroads spurred transportation and communications across the growing nation and helped to consolidate national identity. It also proved to be an invaluable resource during the Civil War. The darker side of railroads include the implications for concentration of wealth during the Gilded Age, heightened tensions and violence between Native nations and the US, and the use and abuse of railroad labor.
To begin, learners studied a set of documents on the impact of the railroad and used the See/Think/Wonder protocol from Project Zero's Visible Thinking website (http://pzweb.harvard.edu/vt) .
Students then broke up into small groups to analyze document sets created from materials available online and excerpts from trade books on the impact of the railroad on Chinese Laborers, Irish immigrants, Magnates, Native Americans, Trade and Transportation, and Anglo Settlers. They used the criteria of teaching historical significance described in Making Sense of History to guide their discussion of railroads and US history. Links and references are attached as a word file.